Pr couple or true love?

When Asap Rocky and Rihanna were papped on the Malibu beach with their newborn son in December 2022, American gossip pages pounced on the news. "There was a camera crew present, it looked like the family was doing a scenic photoshoot," they wrote, unaware that the photos taken by said camera crew that day would later appear on the March cover of British Vogue, two days after Rihanna's Super Bowl concert and the simultaneous announcement of her second pregnancy.

In the world of entertainment, celebrities' sharing of intimate moments has always been an effective move to attract the spotlight, and Rihanna knows it well. Since the beginning of her engagement to rapper Asap Rocky, the singer has been teasing her fans with rare and well-planned shoots, such as the first pregnancy shoot taken in Harlem by Miles Diggs, the 'fashion's favourite paparazzi': an exclusive shoot as if the photos had been taken secretively, but clearly arranged to look her best. As reported by Jason Lee, CEO of the Hollywood Unlocked platform, Rihanna decided to share the photos because the 'paparazzi had taken unauthorised photos of their baby and intended to release them, so she said that if anyone was going to release them she wanted me to do it,' even though in reality the pop star sold these images to several media outlets, not just Lee's.

If modern-day celebrities like being photographed by paparazzi so much, social media is partly to blame, as it has made online figures almost as important as bank accounts. Whereas until before the advent of Facebook and Instagram, the only ones who made money from a revealing shoot were the gossip pages and fashion magazines, today even the photographed can make money from their personal lives. Chiara Ferragni and Fedez are doing just that, filming their meetings with their therapist for the Amazon-produced series 'The Ferragnez', as is Megan Fox, who on Valentine's Day, three days after the announcement of Machine Gun Kelly's new album, posted cryptic - but not too cryptic - photos to share with her fans her break-up with her boyfriend, only to be 'accidentally' photographed with MGK as she left their psychologist's office. Similarly, Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian's affair began on Saturday Night Live when the star, now Kanye's ex-wife, was advertising the arrival of the new series The Kardashians on Hulu, and ended shortly after the episodes had been released. Davidson never appeared in the series.

Of course it would be evil to say these couples are fake, or to insinuate that the feeling that brought them together was greed and not love, but it must be said that these characters base their earnings on their level of popularity, and not on the veracity of their relationships. According to an article in gawker magazine there are five signs that a relationship is a pr stunt: when they are papped in New York, where there are four times fewer celebrity photographers than in Los Angeles, when they have a new project coming up, when there are rumours that one of them is gay (here the magazine gave the example of former couple Camilla Cabello-Shawn Mendes), when one of them is on the verge of bankruptcy, or when a poor hapless woman is seen with Tom Cruise.

The overwhelming proof that the 'pr couple' is a method that is really used comes from supermodel and author Emily Ratajkoswki, who in recent months has been photographed in various contexts (almost always in New York), by paparazzi who managed to find her with a different man each time. First the rumours of an alleged relationship with Brad Pitt, then videos of Pete Davidson greeting her after a date, photos of a passionate kiss with a mystery man and finally the latest stunt, a post celebrating Valentine's Day in total nudity with comedian Eric André. While the model doesn't seem to be able to wait long enough before calling the paparazzi to make her new flirtations official, Gen Z hero Emma Chamberlain has perfectly learned how to stay relevant whilst living semi-offline, only seemingly hiding her relationship with singer Role Model. The two, who have been together for three years, have never confirmed their relationship with cheesy Instagram posts or obviously planned paparazzi photos, and have instead waited for the right opportunity to be in the eye of the storm, shooting an extravagant editorial for the cover of GQ that fans really enjoyed.

The inescapable attraction that pop culture fans feel for love stories manifests itself in every generation, through the creation of fandoms and ships that romanticise Hollywood couples even before they come to fruition. The favourite victim of these last few years is certainly Timothée Chalamet, who with every release of a film in which he is starring is pelted with posts and videos portraying him as 'head over heels in love' with his co-star. It happened with Taylor Russel in Bones and All, with Zendaya in Dune, and with Saoirse Ronan in Little Women, and we are sure it is going to happen with the next project, Willy Wonka. Years before Chalamet's arrival in the limelight, tabloids and fandoms were concerned about various other tangled Hollywood romances, such as that of Disney stars Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron, or Twilight stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson: all of which ended in break-ups, we know, but both of which were undisputed box-office champions.